Wasn’t the Depression Terrible?

Issued in 1934, in the midst of the Great Depression, these cartoons (by Reuben Award winner Otto Soglow, creator of The Little King, working with David G. Plotkin) gives us an insider’s view of that difficult time. Even the title is a sign of the moment; in 1932, the Republican Party tried to convince people that, no matter what they saw around them, the Depression was already in the past, putting “Wasn’t the depression terrible?” in big letters in newspaper ads and on billboards along commuter corridors in the northeast. (This failed to convince the Depression to go away.)

Content note: This material includes common racial and social caricatures of its day, some of which will be considered inappropriate by modern audiences.